|
|
Sunday, July 12th, 2009
| |
11:10 pm - I met Sheelanagig!
|
|
| Tuesday, July 7th, 2009
| |
1:50 pm - FIC: Sci Fi (by popular demand). TITLE: Alien Alert.
|
|
| |
1:45 pm - weather: summer storm (or shower?)
|
I want to say that rain is pearling down the window pane but that is so corny although the colour of the rain and its shiny translucence is a little pearl-like, but more like pearl-in-the-shell not the hard white ball on my gold ring. There is a drumming sound on roof and other horizontal surfaces. I can barely see the trees through the fog of rain but they seem to be bending from left to right in a gale. The sky is filled with clouds in different shades of grey. The rain is hitting really hard when it hits.
Now it's subsiding a little already. It is summer. There is no lightning (as there was yesterday). The rain is rather wet. It's cosy to be inside but yesterday I ran across the grass to take in the outdoor tablecloth and dishes and because I was wearing summer sandals, my toes got wet and slithered around uncomfortably on top of my soles.
Ah. Stopped already. What do they call this? A summer shower? The noise is gone. I can hear birds.
And the hammering of the carpet fitters in the hall.
|
|
(whisper a sweet nothing)
|
| Monday, July 6th, 2009
| |
10:51 pm - Genre poll
|
|
| |
2:00 pm - just same old boring boring
|
|
| Wednesday, July 1st, 2009
| |
10:17 am - Harry Potter and working with child actors
|
You make the first Harry Potter film in 2001 and then you make a whole bunch more and before you know it, your child actors have grown up, and they have done so not always according to expectations and book-canon plan!
A look in pictures at the HP actors then and now! (I am so highly amused by this.)
( Pics of Now and Then (Malfoy, Dursley, Granger, Weasley, Crabbe, Goyle )
Then. Now.
 
This post comes to you courtesy of an inspiring post by azewewish. Some of its content may overlap with a comment I made over there... ;-)
So!
Who do you think underwent the most impressive transformation growing up?
I've cast my vote... *g*
( ETA! How could I forget Longbottom? )
More ETA: And are they all legal now? Are they all *gasp* rpsable?
|
|
(27 sweet nothings | whisper a sweet nothing)
|
| Friday, June 26th, 2009
| |
10:58 am - Michael Jackson and tendonitis
|
1. I have developed tendonitis of the left shoulder. This is very painful. I have now seen a physiotherapist who advised no typing so I have limited one-hand typing time here. I also can't drive: in England, cars tend to be manual and they drive on the left side of roads; this means that I have to manipulate the gearstick with my left hand and I can't. I also can't even ride a bike so have discovered me shire's bus routes! I can still do longhand, whee, as am right-handed so no excuse left for not writing fiction...
2. Despite typing disability, I did want to register my response to the death of Michael Jackson.
"Every death is dreadful", as a friend of mine says. This, I find, becomes truer as I age. Even people I don't know or don't like: they die and it reminds me of mortality in general and of all our deaths and of the bigness of death. That's one level.
But there's more to the death of a star. A star is more than a person, and is perhaps never a person. The star embodies mythical verities that we need, just like the ancient gods embodied epic and universal qualities and needs. So there is something epic about MJ: the success plus the tragedy; indeed, the success that caused the tragedy -- or that's how the myth sees it. There's something that we need in the over-the-topness of MJ's flaws; they are larger than life and mean more than themselves. If he had been more normal, arguably, he'd have had less of this tragic myth power for us. He'd have been a politician or a talented musician but not an icon.
There's also something specifically 20th century about his appeal. The idea that an unhappy childhood, bullying father, fraternal tension produces a fucked-up adulthood seems right and plausible to us post-Freudian believers in psychology.
Two things to say on a personal level. Because a star is so famous and in the public eye, many people couldn't help having their lives entwined with his. Listening to Billy Jean brings back memories of a particular dance club in Heidelberg in the early 80s and dancing to this beat. MJ has been a part of the furniture of so many people's lives, even those of us who weren't direct fans.
Secondly, I can identify, in an unexpectedly surprising way, with the suffering somehow (maybe wrongly but mythically plausibly) embodied by MJ. There's a connecting humanity there which I'm not sure I ever thought I'd say about weirdo Michael but that, too, has not to do with the real man (whom we can never get at -- part of the power of mythical figures is that we always want to strip away their star persona to get at the 'real' person underneath, but this very desire is part and parcel of the star persona) but with the man-as-myth.
And if this makes it sound as if I'm likening MJ to Achilles or Christ, then that's weird but also oddly compelling.
|
|
(3 sweet nothings | whisper a sweet nothing)
|
| Saturday, June 20th, 2009
| |
12:35 am - depressed
|
|
| Thursday, June 18th, 2009
| |
11:18 pm - the world has no clue. No. Clue.
|
On Monday, Radio Four (BBC talk radio in Britain) broadcast an interview with two women, one of whom is the new editor of something called 'Erotic Review'. This woman claimed that women cannot write erotica as well as men because they're just not that much into sex.
wtf ???
I feel too tired even to begin unravelling this absurdity. Although one part of me, hehe, grins in glee that the fanfic corner of our universe still seems to be a sekrit little niche. *g*
Link to the absurdity at Reuters
Listen to the absurdity at the BBC website (scroll down to 8:20).
One of these days I might post a few extracts from what passes for 'erotica' or 'porn' as written by men. If I can stop yawning long enough.
|
|
(4 sweet nothings | whisper a sweet nothing)
|
| Sunday, June 14th, 2009
| |
3:17 pm - thank you, kathputli!
|
* * *Thank you so much, ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) kathputli_girl!!!* * *
Today I got your amazing parcel!! I am overwhelmed! Thank you, thank you. I am so excited. This is hours of wallowing in the Sukhwinder song magic. I have almost none of these songs. I've heard one CD already and love it! Well, I don't love every single song but I love having them altogether, and some of the songs are truly gorgeous. I adore that Aaja Nachle one.
And thanks also for the cheeky little Sukhi button... when to wear it??
Let me know how I can repay!
|
|
(1 sweet nothing | whisper a sweet nothing)
|
| Saturday, June 13th, 2009
| |
10:23 pm - arthropods
|
I am very sad about the bees.
And very worried. We have a buddleia globosa in our garden which is a beautiful huge bush with sphere-shaped yellow flowers that bloom for three weeks every year around this time. A few years ago this bush was one big ball of bees buzzing for the entire time. They love those little round flowers! I once sat surrounded by this bush, as in a bower, and listened to the buzzing all around me. No bee came near me as they were all much too interested in the bush. It was glorious.
This year I'm seeing hardly any bees. And today I found two dead bees underneath the bush.
I am very worried. I want to get a hive and plant bee-friendly flowers and put the hive in the back of our garden.
It's weird; back in the 70s we used to have fantasies about a post-nuclear-holocaust world in which human life had become extinct and insects ruled the roost. And now: it's the insects' survivals we're having to be worried about. Because ours depend on it.
P.S. I know, of course, that my icon is not a bee. But it is an arthropod!
|
|
(9 sweet nothings | whisper a sweet nothing)
|
| Thursday, June 11th, 2009
| |
12:07 am - Where is all the Apprentice slash?
|
OK, I just slashed Margaret/Kate and Phil/Nick in comment fic.
There's nought like rps. Nought.
*hides head in sand*
|
|
(whisper a sweet nothing)
|
| Wednesday, June 10th, 2009
| |
10:52 pm - papyrology
|
Margaret Mountford from The Apprentice truly rocks.
It is so refreshing and so unusual to hear a serious intellectual topic being broached on prime time reality television. I nearly fell off my chair when Margaret announced she was leaving The Apprentice to finish her Ph.D. in papyrology! Papyrology!! I want to sing!
Two things about that:
1) It is very annoying and tediously symptomatic how intellectual topics get mocked and derided on TV. Both Alan Sugar and the host whose name I forget professed not to know what Margaret was talking about or not to know how even to spell or pronounce it in a kind of faux display of ignorance. On the part of Sugar, it is most doubtlessly 100 per cent faux because I refuse to believe that in the five years that he's known about this, Alan and Margaret have not once sat down over a cup of tea or a glass of beer to talk about this Ph.D. plan of hers!! I was very impressed with Margaret how she didn't take the bait and demean herself but patiently and seriously and even somewhat boringly explained what papyrology entails!
2) I am reminded of the Chinese poem: 'Businessmen boast of their skill and cunning / But in philosophy they are as little children / etc.' A person may be a successful business tycoon for 30, 40 years but what happens when their hair silvers and retirement looms? They seek refuge in the humanities to give real meaning to their lives. Yay!
|
|
(8 sweet nothings | whisper a sweet nothing)
|
| |
7:57 pm - 21-1-02: my fannish origins: another historical document unearthed
|
I found an old diary from 2001-2002 and can reconstruct it all!
Here are the origins of my two obsessions: slash and Bollywood.
Tuesday, 20 November 2001, 20:45: I saw Kuch Kuch Hota Hai at the Arts Picturehouse.
Friday, 21 December 2001: t'h and t'elder son see Lord of the Rings.
I have no record when I went to see this film! T'younger son was too little to see it! So we had to split up as a family.
Wednesday, 26 December 2001: The diary records "I could see Lord of Rings today." (But not whether I did.)
Now comes the fateful weekend: Sat/Sun, 19-20 January 2002. We spent the weekend with a good friend who lives in Leamington Spa, near Birmingham and Warwick. It was during this weekend that I read an article on Tolkien and the Lord of the Rings and how women, too, could like this! Written by a woman in the Times Literary Supplement.
That night, and I can pinpoint it exactly because it was spent on the sofabed of our Warwick friend -- that night I had a dream in which Frodo and Sam kissed.
The next day (Mon 21 Jan. 2002) I googled -- did google even exist yet? No, I'm not sure it did... well, I did something, I did an internet search: Frodo Sam kissed. I found Least Expected (remember Least Expected??? Lotr fps site.). I was overwhelmed.
And on 24 January 2002 I was already scribbling my first Lotr fps fic. It took me all of three days!
Hah.
The diary makes no mention of any of this, of course. It was my sekrit lief. The only tell-tale sign comes ten days later, on Sat, 2 Feb: 11:00 LoTR. This was when I went to see the movie for the second time, and I was already calling it 'LoTR' (and not Lord of the Rings).
The diary also makes no mention of when exactly I clicked my way through to cimness's ficsite, read my way through her Lotr fps, stumbled across her Lotr rps and was lost, lost, lost 4 evah. Clearly, by the 24th of Jan. this hadn't happened yet; otherwise I wouldn't have been scribbling Frodo/Sam.
Sometime before 19 January (on the Friday, 18 Jan., if I remember rightly) I subscribed to an odd geeky Lotr site, that was formatted yellow and green on black, with a lot of men geeking on about Tolkien (remember this one, sheldrake?), and there was one thread that talked about the actors being sexy or something of that ilk. I think it was this comment that led to my Wet Warwick Dream.
Wow. Life-changing events.
|
|
(9 sweet nothings | whisper a sweet nothing)
|
| Tuesday, June 9th, 2009
| |
11:31 pm - What, eh? Splendid, my man, splendid.
|
Desert Prince?
Draco/Harry, and Dudley?
Orig?
Karl/Dom Truth or Dare?
Lord Peter Wimsey/manservant Bunter?
Or Star Trek rps??
And yes, Junalele, I know, I know: Draco/Cristiano Ronaldo.
I mean, I've got to do something to redeem my reputation after that dreadful last post... *g*
|
|
(15 sweet nothings | whisper a sweet nothing)
|
| |
11:11 pm - FIC: "A little while at least". A HISTORICAL DOCUMENT from Jan. 2002.
|
Title: A Little While At Least
Author: Lobelia; lobelia321
Fandom: Lord of the Rings fps
Pairing: Sam / Frodo
Rating: 15; PG-13
Length: 1, 180 words.
Category: Historical document from the handwritten archives of Lobelia.
Date of document: 24 January 2002.
Canon: Given the date, it may be seen that this is total and utter Book Canon!
Type of document: First fanfic ever, ever written in my life!
Handwritten in pencil, on 3 sheets of lined A-4 paper, while sitting in the University Library tearoom. I remember that my heart was beating the entire time I wrote this!
Author's important notes: This fic is posted here for purposes of historical record-keeping. Inspired by reading a 1979 Kirk/Spock fic yesterday and inspired by finding the very first fic I ever wrote (and never posted) among a pile of notes and fics, I decided to type this up so that, if I ever lose these pieces of paper, I will have a web record of their existence.
Editorial notes: I have kept in some of my deletions because it interests me what decisions I made back then. I have also retained the idiosyncratic punctuation, the appalling misuse of the verb 'lay', the overlong paragraphs, the interminable sentences, and other faults.
Category: This is a kind of melodramatic hurt/comfort but it tips over into unintentional crack at one point.
Summary: Sam felt a warm bulge grow in his breeches, and as he prolonged the kiss, an answering bulge.
If you're interested in the first fanfic I ever properly typed up and sent out to beta: that was Lotrips, Orlando/Dominic, Moon Madness, finished on 7 February 2002. Within 2 ½ weeks of the Sam/Frodo one. Oh ladies, I was hooked.
( A little while at least )
|
|
(9 sweet nothings | whisper a sweet nothing)
|
| |
6:23 pm - identity crisis
|
|
| Monday, June 8th, 2009
| |
9:40 pm
|
This will teach me. I had the notion that my LJ had gone eerily quiet and blamed it all on defections to DW. Then I read all the comments I got for a recent post and had to come to the sheepish conclusions, that it is not you who have defected but I who have been remiss.
I have buried Freinds in the depth of arcane custom filters and I have not commented as I ought and I haven't, in fact, a clue of what's going on in the worlds of fandom.
So, mea culpa and I am off to mend my ways. :-)
In other news, I have ( also had an identity crisis so scroll swiftly past )
|
|
(11 sweet nothings | whisper a sweet nothing)
|
| |
8:37 pm - please rec a fic
|
I haven't read any fanfic for at least one year.
Can you recommend something, o wise flist, to get me back into the swing of things? Something that's not too long, not too cracky (because I won't "get" the crack, having been out of it for so long) but can be any fandom, including strange new ones.
Can be a bit older, too. Chances are that if it's been written since April 2008, I won't have read it.
Thank you!!
|
|
(21 sweet nothings | whisper a sweet nothing)
|
| Saturday, June 6th, 2009
| |
7:04 pm - D-day gratitude
|
omg 27 comments on a post -- Thanks, everybody, and I will reply very soon! I promise!!
Just a note on D-Day. It reminds me that I continue to be deeply thankful for every single ordinary man, father, brother, son, husband, lover, mate -- who went out to a foreign country and put himself in the line of fire to ensure that I and my nation (if it were SGA, I'd now have to be saying "my people") have so far been blessed to enjoy over 60 years of peace. My life has been a life of peace, democracy and affluence, and I owe this to the intervention of the Allies in World War Two. Thank you. And thank you also to the Russians who made possibly the largest sacrifice out of anyone but have, so far, alas, not been 100 percent able to reap the rewards.
For thems as don't know: I am German.
|
|
(2 sweet nothings | whisper a sweet nothing)
|
|
|
|
|
2 (16.7%)